• Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    28·
    3 days ago

    It’s valid, and called “passive voice phrasing.” Most of the time, it’s not recommended, but in a few cases it works better, like when you want to abstract or obscure the subject of a sentence.

    This is why they say “Shots were fired in an officer-involved incident.” Somebody shot a gun and they don’t want to say it’s the cops.

    Often though, people just use it without thinking about it

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      It’s valid, and called “passive voice phrasing.”

      You’re conflating two separate things. The passive voice is just any “be verbed by actor” construct and is used to make the object of a sentence into the subject either to emphasize it above the actor or because the actor of the verb is abstract or unknown. It’s only bad if it’s used evasively, and is also a way that rhetoric can focus on and humanize victims in cases where there is often more focus and agency given to abusers/killers/enslavers/etc.

      Passive phrasing/language is the evasive way journalists weasel away from ascribing agency to anyone, and ironically often doesn’t use the passive voice because “nooo don’t use the passive voice, center the actors, the actions, make it snappy!” is stuff they’re taught in school and you can often be even more evasive using active intransitive verbs, which leads to absurd active voice passive phrasings like “bullet from sheriff’s department armory caused death of bystander in shootout at CVS” (paraphrasing an actual headline from a real event from memory here) or “suspect dies following routine traffic stop, ‘he was armed and dangerous’ says police chief”.